Historical Jesus Archives - Page 20 of 35 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Jesus’ Mother and Brothers in Mark

A brief tangent on Mark’s account of Jesus’ rejection in his hometown (Mark 6:1-6), as summarized in my post. As I indicated there, Jesus’ townspeople are incredulous that he can deliver such an impressive address in the synagogue. They ask: “Where did he get such these things? What what is this wisdom that has been given to him? And how can such miracles be worked through his hands? Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joses, Juda and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” In other words: the townsfolk knew of Jesus as an unimpressive member of the community, who worked a day job with his hands (say, a construction worker) – not great miracles (with his hands). And his family was all there. The comments on the family are interesting and have prompted a lot of discussion over the years. To begin with, Jesus is here said to be “the son of Mary.” As frequently noted, that’s a bit odd. Normally ... To read the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:39:15-04:00November 19th, 2017|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Did Jesus Mean that Literally? Rewards and Punishments in the Afterlife

I return now to my thread dealing with the teachings about the afterlife in the New Testament. One question that can naturally be asked is whether what is said about the afterlife in this, that, or the other passage is meant to be taken literally. For example, I have discussed the famous passage of the “Sheep and the Goats” in Matthew 25, where the Son of Man at the end of history sits on his throne and divides the nations (or gentiles?) into two groups as a shepherd would separate his sheep and goats. The sheep are given eternal life and the goats are forced to go to eternal punishment. But isn’t this all symbolic? After all, people are said to be farm animals, when in fact people are human. So isn’t the whole thing symbolic? Isn’t it, for example, a kind of parable? I may change my mind on the matter, but my sense at this stage of my thinking is that the passage is not a parable. Here I’ll give several reasons. First [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:39:14-04:00November 3rd, 2017|Afterlife, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Sheep and the Goats

Jesus’ teaching about the “separation of the sheep and the goats” is found in only one place in the New Testament, Matthew 25:31-46. It is easily one of my favorite passages of the entire Bible, and as I have pointed out, in my view, it is a teaching of Jesus himself (not something put on his lips by Matthew or by Matthew’s source, M, or by an early Christian story-teller). I think in fact, it well encapsulates Jesus’ entire proclamation. There is a judgment day coming and those who have lived in an upright way, loving others, showing compassion on those in need, helping those in dire straits, will be given an eternal reward; those who fail to live in this way will be severely punished. The passage is sometimes called a “parable,” but I don’t see any strong indication that it is meant to be taken metaphorically. As far as I can tell, it was meant as a literal description of what would happen at the end of this age when the judge of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:57-04:00October 25th, 2017|Afterlife, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Son of Man, Pericopes, and the Complexities of Biblical Scholarship

I realized anew this morning why it is so difficult for scholars of the NT (or the Hebrew Bible) to explain the results of their results of their research to non-scholars. Well, one of the reasons. As is true, I suppose, for most fields of serious intellectual inquiry, the *results* of scholarship are built on other results that are built on other results that are built on… and so it goes. If the scholar explains his findings without explaining the background – the assumptions based on previous findings that are built on the assumptions based on yet previous findings and so on – then it all sounds very arbitrary and rather easily dismissed. That’s why it is so easy for a scholar to give an interpretation of a passage based on a detailed analysis that is itself based on careful research only to have a non-scholar “refute” it simply by quoting a verse from somewhere else. The non-expert simply assumes the scholar doesn’t know about this other verse, or hasn’t thought about it, or taken [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:57-04:00October 24th, 2017|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Decent Burials for Crucified Victims: A Blast From the Past

My post a couple of weeks ago about the burial of Jesus (understandably) struck a nerve for some readers; I was just now digging around in the archives, and see that I addressed most of the important issues, head on, in this rather controversial post I made back in 2012. All these years later, I'm still open to being convinced otherwise!!! ****************************** In my previous post I quoted a number of ancient sources that indicated that part of the torture and humiliation of being crucified in antiquity was being left, helpless, exposed not just to the elements but to scavenging birds and other animals. These sources suggest that the normal practice was to leave the victims on the cross to be pecked and gnawed at both before and after death; in some instances there are indications that this would go on for days. And so the question naturally arises if the same thing could be expected in the case of people being crucified in Judea around the year 30 CE. As I pointed out John [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:57-04:00October 20th, 2017|Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Jesus, the Sheep, and the Goats

I have been talking about the criterion of dissimilarity for one ultimate reason: wanted to show why, in my opinion, a particular passage in Matthew’s Gospel goes back to the historical Jesus, the man himself. I.e., it does not involve words put on his lips by later followers, but is something he himself actually said. If you’re a little fuzzy on how the criterion of dissimilarity works, please read the preceding two posts. The following has been taken from my undergraduate textboo on the NT. In it I give two examples of how this particular criterion can be applied to the teachings of Jesus. It is the *second* example that I will be most interested in, but the first can help get you into the swing of things about how the criterion works. ********************************************************** In some respects, there isn’t a whole lot that we can say about the various apocalyptic teachings ascribed to Jesus in our Gospels from the standpoint of the trickiest of our criteria to use, the criterion of dissimilarity. Most of his [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:57-04:00October 18th, 2017|Afterlife, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

How Do We Know What Jesus Said or Did? The Criterion of Dissimilarity in Practice

The reason I’m explaining the criterion of dissimilarity is because I want to *use* it to talk about a passage in Matthew of relevance to the broader themes of this thread. But before I use it I need to make sure everyone understands it. In this post I show how it can be applied usefully; I being by restating the caveat about the criterion that I ended with yesterday (if you haven’t read that post, I’d suggest doing so before reading this one). ********************************************** I want to be perfectly clear about the limitations of this criterion. Just because a saying or deed of Jesus happens to conform to what Christians were saying about him does not mean that it cannot be accurate. Obviously, the earliest disciples followed Jesus precisely because they appreciated the things that he said and did. They certainly would have told stories about him that included such things. Thus, on the one hand, the criterion may do no more than cast a shadow of doubt on certain traditions. For example, when in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:56-04:00October 17th, 2017|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Were the Disciples Martyred for Believing the Resurrection? A Blast From the Past

Here is an interesting question that I addressed on the blog exactly five years ago today, one that continues to be relevant and significant; ************************************************************ QUESTION: Another very very popular evidence put forward for the resurrection is “the disciples would not have died for what they knew was a lie, therefore it must have happened.” I hear this all the time. You note that they really believed they saw Jesus after he died so they were not lying. However, is there evidence (historical or literary) that they were killed because of their belief in Jesus’ resurrection? RESPONSE: Ah yes, if I had a fiver for every time I’ve heard this comment over the years, I could retire to a country-home in Maine…. Several other people have responded to this question on the blog by saying that we have lots of records of lots of people who have died for a something that they knew, literally, not to be true. I am not in a position to argue that particular point. But I can say something [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:56-04:00October 13th, 2017|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

How Old Was Jesus at His Baptism, Start of His Ministry & Death?
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How Old Was Jesus at His Baptism, Start of His Ministry & Death?

Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations

How Old Was Jesus at His Baptism, Start of His Ministry & Death?

How old was Jesus at his baptism, when he started his ministry, or when he died? You've probably seen the popular inspirational quote that goes something like this, "Jesus didn't start his ministry until he was 30 years old, and yet he changed the world." I guess this is supposed to encourage people in their teens and twenties that haven't accomplished much in their life. (As if comparing their potential future to the accomplishments of the supposed "son of God" is supposed to make them feel better! Ha!) It also illustrates a common assumption (or perhaps misconception), that Jesus was 30 years old when he began his ministry. Is that a fact? If so, where does the Bible say so? How Old Was Jesus When He Died? This is not a slam dunk answer. In fact, I ask all my students at Chapel Hill this question (many of whom answer incorrectly) on their first-day quiz. Almost everyone who thinks about the matter thinks that Jesus was 33 years old when he died. But the New [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:56-04:00October 11th, 2017|Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Explaining Jesus’ Apocalyptic Assumptions

One other aspect of Jesus’ teaching is important to emphasize before continuing on to consider his understanding of the afterlife. That is the thoroughly apocalyptic character of his views. I have discussed Jewish apocalypticism a number of times on the blog—including some months ago on the current thread. I don’t want to repeat all that here in the same form, but I do want to summarize what the view is and discuss its underlying assumptions. In a small nutshell, apocalypticists believed that this world was being controlled by evil forces responsible for this terrible mess of things (corrupt governments; natural disasters; persecution of the righteous), but that God, who was ultimately sovereign, was soon to intervene in the course of human affairs, overthrow the forces of evil, and establish a utopian kingdom here on earth. To Read the rest of this post you need to belong to the blog. Belonging is easy and relatively cheap -- less than 50 cents a week! And every cent goes to help those in need. You get tons for [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:56-04:00October 10th, 2017|Afterlife, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Preaching of Jesus in a Nutshell

I am trying to set up what I want to say about Jesus' view of the afterlife, and am finding that it requires a good bit of background information. I have already done two things: shown what he taught about the coming kingdom and explained that his teaching (about the kingdom and everything else) is very different in John from the Synoptics. Scholars are almost unanimous that given these differences, the older sources (the Synoptics and the accounts they built on, e.g., Q, M, and L) are more likely to be accurate about Jesus' words than the later and heavily theologized John. Now I need to explain more broadly, if in very brief form, the major elements in Jesus' preaching/teaching. For that I have borrowed from a post a few years ago, as follows: ************************************************************** We could obviously have a year-long thread on the topic of what it was Jesus taught during his itinerant preaching ministry. Many people have written very long books on the subject – and the books just keep comin’ out. If [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:56-04:00October 9th, 2017|Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Skeletal Remains of Yehohanan: Readers Mailbag October 8, 2017

Yehohanan: a reader's question. QUESTION: One thing came to mind during the discussion of whether crucified persons were buried. There is a case where an ossuary was found with a nail through the ankle bone. [I think it was an ankle, might have been a wrist.] Obviously, this was an exceptional case; as I recall, there are some 900 bone boxes in Israeli museums and this is the only such case, where according to Josephus hundreds (thousands?) were crucified in 1st Century Palestine. But at any rate, what do you make of this exceptional case? RESPONSE: I dealt with this issue on the blog several years ago, while I was responding to the claims of my scholarly colleague Craig Evans, who maintained that Jesus must have been buried right away, not left to hang on the cross for days, as I had argued in my book How Jesus Became God. Craig was asserting the traditional Christian view (as found in the Gospels), and he mounted a number of arguments based on various pieces of evidence. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:55-04:00October 8th, 2017|Bart's Critics, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Jesus’ Teaching About the Kingdom of God

I have explained how the idea of resurrection arose within early Judaism, and now I want to talk about the idea of afterlife in the teachings of Jesus. To begin with, I need to stress that when Jesus talked about the coming kingdom of God – the core of his apocalyptic message – he was *not* referring to what happens to a person’s soul after she or he dies. Here is how I explain Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom in my first-ever trade book for a popular audience, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium ***************************************************** The very first thing that Jesus is recorded to have said in our very earliest surviving source involves an apocalyptic pronouncement of the coming Kingdom of God. In Mark’s Gospel, after being baptized by John and tempted by Satan in the wilderness, in neither of which is he recorded as having said anything, Jesus comes into Galilee with an urgent message: The time is filled up and the Kingdom of God is almost here; repent and believe in the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:41-04:00September 27th, 2017|Afterlife, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

My Favorite Anecdote about Jesus and the Afterlife: Teeth Will Be Provided!

I was thinking (I'm always thinking) about Jesus and the afterlife, and suddenly my favorite rather humorous anecdote occurred, which involves a real moment in (relatively) modern scholarship. I tried to find where I had written about it in one of my books: I was sure I *had* done so, but I couldn't find anyplace where I had. If I haven't, I may include it in the next one. But I did find that I made a post of it on the blog four years ago. Here it is! **************************************************************** I think it’s time for a break from the hard-hitting discussions for something a bit different and humorous. And so I have an anecdote to tell about a passage that I quoted in one of my earlier posts from Matthew, where Jesus says: “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:39-04:00September 15th, 2017|Christian Apocrypha, Historical Jesus, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum|

The Essence of Biblical Apocalyptic Thought

I earlier pointed out that my views of suffering in the 1980s were heavily influenced by the biblical perspective that scholars call apocalypticism. I have discussed the major views of apocalypticism on the blog a couple of times over the years, but some review would be useful at this point, both for those whose memories are as sieve-like as mine, and for those who weren’t around yet for all those years of previous fun on the blog. Let me stress, Jewish apocalypticism was a very common view in Jesus’ day – it was the view of the Essenes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, of the Pharisees, of John the Baptist, later of the Apostle Paul – and almost certainly of Jesus. This is a widely held view among critical scholars – by far the majority view for over a century, since the writings of none other than Albert Schweitzer. What did early Jewish apocalypticists believe? Let me break it down into four component themes. I have drawn this discussion from my textbook on the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:37:46-04:00July 13th, 2017|Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Was Jesus Made Up? A Blast from the Past.

In browsing through some old posts, I came across this one from five years ago, in which I deal with two questions I still today get asked about the "evidence" that Jesus did, or did not, exist. The post deals with pointed issues raised by my colleague in the field, Ben Witherington. The answers still seem germane to me today, as the question of Jesus' existence has simply ratcheted up, all these years later. Some of Ben Witherington’s most popular books are The Jesus Quest, and The Problem with Evangelical Theology, among others. *********************************************************************************** Ben Witherington, a conservative evangelical Christian New Testament scholar, has asked me to respond to a number of questions about my book Did Jesus Exist, especially in light of criticism I have received for it (not, for the most part, from committed Christians!). His blog is widely read by conservative evangelicals, and he has agreed to post the questions and my answers without editing, to give his readers a sense of why I wrote the book, what I hoped to accomplish [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:37:45-04:00June 20th, 2017|Bart's Critics, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Historical Jesus, Mythicism|

Would I Be Personally Devastated if the Mythicists Were Right? A Blast From the Past

For my mailbag this week I dug into one from the past -- almost exactly five years ago. I would probably answer it the same today. My thoughts here on how we go about knowing what actually happened in the past strike me as having very broad application (not just to the question I was asked), and (especially toward the end of my answer) to have even greater relevance now than they did then, given our current historical moment. QUESTION: Was also wondering - and maybe you addressed this in your book ... would you feel an emotionally traumatic disappointment if it was conclusively proved that Jesus was indeed a mythical figure? In all honesty how would you feel if it were true beyond a doubt that all the arguments the 'mythicists' have presented were found to be correct (or mostly correct) regarding his assumed existence? This question is not meant to be offensive or unnecessarily provoking - I'm just curious. RESPONSE: I don’t address this in the book, and I think it is a terrific [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:37:26-04:00May 28th, 2017|Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

True Stories that Didn’t Happen

In my previous post I explained how the term “myth” came to be applied to the miracle stories of the New Testament in the work of David Friedrich Strauss in 1835-36. This is all background to what happened to me personally – 150 years later! Before talking about how my views of the Bible changed once I realized many of its stories could not be literally, historically true, I should expand a bit on the very notion that, as Strauss thought, there could be true stories that didn’t happen. What?? Yup. Here’s how I explain it in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. ******************************************** Skipping on to Modern Times A lot – a very lot – has happened since Strauss published his Life of Jesus in 1836. Scores of scholars have pored over every detail of the Gospels, thousands of books and articles have been churned out, countless views have been marshaled, debated, believed, and spurned. And none of that is going to end soon, unless some of the people who think [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:37:26-04:00May 26th, 2017|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, History of Biblical Scholarship, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Meditation Practice and Women at the Empty Tomb: Readers Mailbag April 9, 2017

I will be dealing with two questions in this week’s mailbag, one about me personally – do I meditate? – and one about the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection: in all our narratives it is specifically women who are said to have found the empty tomb and so to be the first witnesses to the resurrection. Given ancient views that denigrate women, is it likely that anyone would make up such a story? If someone made up the tomb-discovery story, wouldn’t they have claimed that that *men* found the tomb empty? And doesn’t that suggest the story really happened as narrated? QUESTION: Do you meditate? If so, which techniques do you use? Do you find it helpful? RESPONSE: Yes indeed, I do meditate. Every New Years I make it a resolution to meditate each and every day. This year I’m doing pretty well *except* when I’m traveling (which, unfortunately, is a lot this semester); that’s probably when I need most to meditate and I just have real trouble scheduling it in. Not good. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:51-04:00April 9th, 2017|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Bart Ehrman & Robert Price Debate – Did Jesus Exist?

As many of you know, this past October I had a public debate with Robert Price on the question of whether Jesus actually existed. To my knowledge Robert is the only "mythicist" (one who thinks Jesus is a complete myth) who actually has a PhD in the relevant field of New Testament studies. For years I've been asked by people to debate a mythicist; I've always resisted, in part because I've thought that by doing so I would lend credibility to their view, which, in my judgment, is not credible. But Robert is a nice guy and I finally yielded and said OK. This is the debate. It was lively in places and -- to my surprise -- ended up being a nice experience. The event was part of the "Mythinformation Conference" Buzzed Belief Debate Series presented by Mythicist Milwaukee at Turner Hall in Milwaukee, WI on Friday October 21st 2016. Mythicist Milwaukee focuses on educating the freethought/skeptic/atheist community about what the organization considers to be the mythological origins of religion. The people [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:34-04:00March 26th, 2017|Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum, Video Media|

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